Leveraging a Content
Strategy for OptimalUser Experience

If content is king, then a content strategy is its ruling. Content is such a vital component to gaining a competitive advantage and companies are realizing its importance and the role it plays in their overall growth strategy. Although content itself is important, what’s even more crucial is how this content is effectively managed across web properties, which is why having a content management strategy in place is necessary.

Having a content management strategy in combination with a robust CMS tool can not only have a positive impact on your enterprise communications but it can also help to boost engagement with your customers. Without one you are rudderless ship with no direction, sailing into the abyss.

Why Every Business
Needs a Content
Management Strategy

Remove content silos to tell a consistent brand story across your web assets

Optimize site layout and navigation to maximize the reach of your content

CAAMP’s Story

The Canadian Association of Accredited Mortgage Professionals (CAAMP) is a national association that was founded in 1994 and its membership is comprised of mortgage lenders, brokers, insurers and other industry professionals. CAAMP is committed to helping its members navigate their fast-paced industry and grow their business by empowering them with the most up to date knowledge and industry trends via their online member portals.

The Challenge

More importantly, each time the content team had to create new content or make a change it required the content authors to request the support of their technical support team. This meant more back and forth communication between departments for changes resulting in a longer wait time for content to be updated. Since so much of their business is based providing relevant content to their members, CAAMP desperately needed a content management strategy.

As a leading provider of value, service and advocacy to Canada’s mortgage professionals, CAAMP owned multiple website properties all hosting specific content that caters to the needs of their diverse membership. CAAMP had six web properties all of these built on different platforms and hosted on different servers, making it very cumbersome to manage content updates across web properties and providing an inconsistent brand experience.

The team at CAAMP recognized that they needed to adopt a CMS tool in order to streamline and simplify their content management process, but before selecting and implementing a CMS solution, they first wanted to come up with comprehensive content migration and ongoing management strategy.

TechBlocks – Defining the
Road to Success

CAAMP chose to work with the solutions experts at TechBlocks to help them outline a content management strategy. TechBlocks has over 8 years of experience in developing comprehensive website strategies and solutions for industry leading clients that focus on enhancing the overall user experience and promoting better brand engagement.

Strategy

TechBlocks recommended building a brand new consolidated CAAMP.org website using a cloud-hosted CMS provider. This new site will include a responsive design to support optimal and consistent brand experiences across desktop, tablet and mobile users. The new website will also empower business users to directly update content with almost no involvement from the CAAMP technical teams, allowing for a faster go-to-market for content changes.

TechBlocks began the process by interviewing all CAAMP web stakeholders to identify the key components that should either be part of the new CAAMP website. From this key criteria, the TechBlocks team created a detailed strategy that would take just under 3 months to carry out.

Also core to the website strategy was to create user personas that would depict characteristics of the different types of users that visit the website. Personas provide information about the type of users, their interests, why they visit website, and what information they are seeking providing key insights into their pain points. This information is then considered when designing the user experience for the different types of visitors on your site. The following personas were developed in a detailed web strategy report based on interviews with the CAAMP website stakeholders.

The TechBlocks strategy
defined the following areas:

Content Management System (CMS)platform selection

URL, domain name and SEO based on current website analytics

A streamlined process for content authoringand publishing

User level roles and permissions

Single sign-on between all CAAMP web properties

Integration with social media sites

Integration with third party systems such as MS Dynamics CRM and Association Member Portal

The optimization of website layout, navigation and content for a consistent brand experience

Requirements for specific web properties in the form of user stories

A new information architecture based on analysis of data from Google Analytics

Mock-ups for the new website layout based on user needs and devices

Integration with payment processing systems

Design

TechBlocks worked collaboratively with the CAAMP Marketing and Design teams to create a responsive website design that would meet current standards for compatibility among different devices such as desktops, mobile and tablets. The overall philosophy while designing the website with CAAMP would be to continue to leverage its existing IT assets as the source of core business data and business rules engine. However, marketing related assets would be stored in the CMS.

Based on performance and user requirements gathered from initial meetings with CAAMP website stakeholders, TechBlocks recommended DNN Evoq Content as the most suitable CMS platform for the new consolidated CAAMP website.

DNN Evoq Content is an industry leading open source CMS system based on .Net (Microsoft) platform. Some of the key features that made this CMS platform an ideal fit for the CAAMP project include:

Easy to use Content Management System (CMS) that includes drag and drop user interfaces, version control, auto-save and rollback